My living room is wrecked! The carnage was caused not by a burglar but by a cat and a pigeon.
The 'fun' started when I was relaxing in the sun in the garden. Thistle, my cat, was cat napping at the doorway to his cat house as cats do. Just as I was taking a sip of my non alcoholic pina colada, Thistle shot past me and threw himself against the living room French window. He then retreated, took another run then did the same thing. Inside the room I thought I had a crazed burglar as papers were shooting everywhere and my plant pots were being upturned. When I looked closely though I saw that there was a great big fat cock wood pigeon in the living room and it was trying to fly out through closed French window and carnage was ensuing.The pigeon had trotted in through the open kitchen door no doubt hoping to lunch on Thistles cat biscuits.
Thistle had now realised that it was easier to get in through the open door rather then making kamikaze assaults the window. Given that he spends hours inside the lounge watching pigeons outside on the lawn, his wee brain took a while to process this reversal where he was outside and the pigeon was inside.
When I went in, the bird was perching on my ceiling lampshade which was swinging violently. The cat who by now was going totally mental climbed onto the TV and jumped in a heroic attempt to grab the avine intruder.
Instead he missed, landed on me then tried to use my head as a launch pad for a second attempt. Needless to say with claws at full stretch to ensure a rapid but secure take off they buy in my head and blood began down my cheek. In the melee the pigeon, understandably, shit itself and its poo when all down my neck. In an attempt to calm things own I grabbed the cat and locked him in the greenhouse which was a mistake as he was out again in two seconds having squeezed through the vents which were open on account of this being a hot day. I had in fact imprisoned there once before when I was trying to resuscitate a mouse which he was about to eat and clearly this experience had familiarised him with all the escape routes from this prison.
So the chase continued. Thistle shot up my Christmas tree which promptly collapsed (I keep my Christmas tree up permanently because the glow of the neon lights lend an ambience to the room) and Thistle continued the chase with tinsel round his neck and a Wise Man bauble stuck to his tail. The pigeon thought it saw an escape route when it spotted the blue skies above a Paris street cafe not realising that this was painted sky in my large Parisian canvas into which it promptly flew . Feathers went everywhere, the lamp went flying, my vase of lucky bamboo went flying as did some treasured pictures. In fact the only thing that wasn’t flying was the pigeon.
Finally I managed to recapture Thistle and imprison him in the laundry basket. The pigeon by now partially dazed, was sitting on the felled Christmas tree and in his dazed state I managed to grab him and release him in to the garden. Amazingly he seemed uninjured and flew away. Thistle stuck his head out of the basket like Andy Pandy, nibbled a few of his biscuits then went back to his house to continue his snooze. As I hoovered up feathers, bathed my wounds, collected up papers, cleaned pigeon poo and reassembled the Christmas tree the cat was sound asleep and the pigeon was perching on a tree and I’m sure I saw smile on his face.
BDH